Virginia Commonwealth University

3/26/2020 - If we were all at VCU, I'd have given a mindfulness presentation to student-athletes yesterday. But, since we're not all at VCU during these strange and anxious times, I decided to make this video of what I might have said. Hope you enjoy it.

Stress Management for Athletes

If there were only one mental skill that I could teach student-athletes it would be stress management. Student-athletes face all the stressors of non-athletes, plus other stressors unique to being a student-athlete, like competitive pressures, demanding schedules, managing relationships with teammates and coaches, dealing with injuries, travel, balancing academics and athletics, and more. Failure to cope with stress is linked to all kinds of problems such as increased risk of injury, mental health problems, and decreased academic and sport performance.

Fortunately, learning simple stress management techniques can be quick and easy. Here are some links to some audios, videos, and articles to help you manage your stress:

• Video: How to be a Happy Ram (8 min, 28 sec). This video gives you some practical tips on how to find times to rest, relax, and recover.
• Video: Stress Management and Sport Performance (53 min, 24 sec). This video is a more in-depth look at the effects of stress, its relationship to sport performance, as well as a variety of techniques to deal with it.
• Audio: Progressive Relaxation Exercise (26 min, 45 sec). This audio will walk you through a relaxation exercise to help you become very relaxed before going to sleep or at other times when you want to become deeply relaxed. NOTE: Progressive relaxation involves tensing and then relaxing muscle groups. If you are injured, do not tense that muscle group.
• Audios: Nature Sounds (10 min, 0 sec). The following audios are of various sounds of nature. Just close your eyes, listen to the soundscapes, and image yourself in the scene. Use these audios to quickly relax when you only have ten minutes.
  • Meadow at Daybreak
  • Mountain Steam
  • Ocean Waves
  • Spring Dawn Chorus
  • Summer Forest at Night
• Article: Psyching Up and Psyching Down (8 pages). This training article is focused on how to regulate your intensity for enhanced sport performance by using a variety of relaxation or activation techniques.
• Website: VCU Sport Psychology. Yes, I'm talking about the rest of this website! You’ll find all of the resources listed above as well as much more information on how to use mental skills to enhance mental wellness, improve sport performance, and facilitate injury recovery here.

For more information or to make a confidential appointment, contact VCU Sport Psychologist Dr. Dana Blackmer at 804-828-8978 or drblackm@vcu.edu.

Recovering from mistakes may be the hardest mental task in sports. Athletes frequently become so self-critical after making a mistake that they get physically tense, lose their focus, make another mistake, and then the cycle starts all over again. To break this cycle, follow the “Four R’s”: 1 – RELEASE the feeling by expressing your understandable frustration and disappointment in a quick, appropriate, and constructive way. 2 – RETHINK the situation to keep from getting too negative by using a "stop signal" to interrupt your negative thinking, like saying "Stop!" to yourself or picturing a stop sign and then thinking more positive and realistic thoughts, like what a good friend would say to you now. 3 – RELAX your body to discharge the physical tension by taking a slow, deep breath. And 4 – REFOCUS your attention to what’s important now by saying something like “let’s go,” “refocus,” or "reboot," to yourself. To learn more about how to recover from mistakes and stay positive, check out the "Self-Talk" training article on the Skills Page. 

Many athletes get tense and anxious before or during a critical part of a competition. This is normal, but if your mind is worried or your muscles are tense, you can’t perform at your best. To take the edge off your nerves, try using diaphragmatic breathing.  Here’s how to do it:  Slowly inhale for 4 seconds, filling your lungs up from the bottom to the top. Your stomach should push out a lot more than your chest as you do this. Hold the breath for one to two seconds, and then slowly exhale for 8 seconds while saying “relax” to yourself. This sounds simple, but it takes some practice, so try it several times a day for at least a week before you use it in a game. The more you practice, the better you’ll get at controlling your nerves. To get more details on diaphragmatic breathing, and many other emotional regulation techniques, take a look at the "Psyching Up and Psyching Down" article on the Skills Page.

Here’s another tip on how to manage exertion pain. Yes, exertion pain hurts, but how it affects performance is largely a matter of perception. Some athletes interpret pain as a sign of weakness, evidence of poor fitness, or a signal to slow down. They feel frustrated and discouraged, and berate themselves for not doing better. These negative thoughts and feelings only increase the perception of pain. For these athletes, pain is their enemy. On the other hand, some athletes interpret exertion pain as a sign that they are going hard, getting tougher, and coming closer to achieving their goals. They feel motivated and inspired by their persistence and tenacity. These positive thoughts and feelings not only diminish their perception of pain, they also increase confidence, motivation, and focus. For these athletes, pain is their friend. Changing your perception of pain can be learned, but it takes practice. During your next hard training block, be aware of what you say to yourself when you start to feel exertion pain. Practice changing negative thoughts to more positive ones, like "The pain means I'm getting stronger" or "Keep pushing; this is where my training pays off." Feel the pride and excitement of rising to the challenge. These positive thoughts and feelings will help you make friends with your pain, and help your pain make you better.

Yesterday’s post was about using mantras to manage exertion pain. Today, I thought I’d give you an example of how I used one a few years ago during my first century ride of the summer. It was three gazillion degrees – in the shade.  With ten miles to go my legs were Jell-O.  I looked at my odometer; it read 96.22.  At 106.22 I’d be home. “106.22,” I repeated, “106.22.”  I said it over and over.  It became a mantra.  I said it in rhythm with my cadence. I sang it to a conga beat. “One oh six point two TWO.  One oh six point two TWO!” Every time I thought about my pain, I refocused on my mantra. Finally, I was home, and in one piece, too. Being aware of your physical condition during a workout or competition is helpful; being distracted by your suffering is not. The key is not to avoid pain, it’s to manage it, and mantras can help you do this.  There are three kinds of mantras: those that redirect your attention (like mine); those that keep you motivated (e.g., “stay strong”); and those that help you maintain good technique (e.g., “shoulders loose”).  A good mantra is short, personally meaningful, and relevant to the situation. Use some on during your next workout to find ones that work for you. With practice, you’ll be able to use them to stay strong.

If you’re running cross-country, preparing to run the “Man U,” or simply ramping up your cross-training, you know what it’s like to deal with exertion pain. A key mental skill in endurance sports is learning how to get re-energized when you’re exhausted. The point is not to avoid exertion pain, it’s to manage it. ?Mantras can help you do this. ?Mantras are short, relevant, and personally meaningful phrases or even songs that you repeat to yourself to keep your rhythm, focus your attention, increase your motivation, or maintain good technique. ?Try some next time you train to find ones that work for you.

Yesterday I told you how to make your imagery more effective so you can use it to improve your sport performance. Once you can keep a vivid and controllable image in your head, the next step is to write a three- to five-minute script that describes you performing your sport at your peak. There’s a training article on using imagery, including a sample imagery script on the Skills page of VCU’s Sport Psychology website, but here’s the short version of what you do: Use the present tense and first person; describe everything you see, hear and feel; and create a realistic, positive ending in which you’ve done your best, overcome any obstacles, and accomplished your goals. To practice imagery, close your eyes, relax, and run the script through your head twice each day.

Using imagery is a great way for athletes to increase their confidence, regulate their intensity, and improve their technique. And, the more you practice imagery, the more it will ramp up your performance. To start using imagery in your sport, take a few minutes after your practices and competitions to review your performance in your mind, while your memories are still fresh. Use all your senses, notice your emotions, and feel your muscles move as you perform. This will increase the vividness of your imagery, which is key to using it to compete at your peak. And this is just the beginning. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you how to create an imagery script to improve your sport performance.

You can’t rely on your strengths until you can see what they are. ?Many athletes see their shortcomings in excruciating detail, but they’re blind to what they do well. For a more balanced view, try “positive journaling.” ?Write down at least three things that you did well after every practice and competition, no matter how badly you think it went. ?For example, even if you performed poorly you may have been persistent, determined, and unwilling to quit. Positive journaling will help you see your strengths more clearly. ?Once you can see them, you’ll be able to rely on your strengths to gain confidence, acquire a more positive outlook, and improve your performance. 

If you are part of a team, it’s important to use your teammates as a resource. It’s common for a team to debrief after an event, but to stop some problems before they start, try doing a “pre-brief.” Sit down with your team before the season begins and discuss how you have worked together as a team in the past and how you hope to do so in the future.  Talk about any issues that might come up during the season that could be a problem or how others on the team can help you. If you perform better by spending some time alone before a competition rather than getting too worked up at the team pep talk, you should make your team aware of this.  If you have any concerns about your role on the team or being ready for a competition, let your team know how they could help you out. Deal with this stuff now and you won’t have to deal with it later after something has become a problem. 

Many teams have pre-season get-togethers to build team cohesion. These are great, but to make them even better, add these goal-setting activities. First, have all the athletes share two goals they have for this season -- one for themselves and one for the team. Second, establish a team goal for the season that everyone can strive for together. Third, have everyone describe one thing they want from the team to help them reach their individual goal and one thing they can give to the team to help it reach its goal. Finally, create a team motto, something like, “we never quit” to focus the team on what they need to do to achieve their goal this season.

If you race cross country, you’ve probably run an unfamiliar course before a competition. Doing reconnaissance of a course is a great way to get familiar with the race, not only to plan your strategy and tactics, but also to visualize the race and imagine your performance. Using imagery to mentally rehearse a race is a powerful and effective mental skill.  The more vivid your imagery, the more effective it is.  You can make your imagery more vivid by visiting the course before the race. You could even take your phone with you and take a few snapshots along the way. Review the pictures later and imagine running well through those parts of the course. The more you look at them, the more vividly you’ll be able to imagine yourself performing at your best in the race. You can get more information on how to use imagery to improve your sport performance on the Skills Page.

Imagery is a powerful mental tool.  Using it can help you improve your performance, increase your confidence, regulate your intensity, and improve your technique. Everyone can use imagery, but we all have different levels of imaging ability.  To improve your imaging ability, take a few minutes after your next practice or competition to review what you did in imagery while you stretch or cool down, when the memories of it are most fresh.  Imaging immediately after you finish will help you build up a library of vivid images that you can use later to improve your performance.  When you image, make sure to include all your senses, capture your emotions, and feel your body as it moves through space.  This will increase the vividness of your imagery, which is a key to using it successfully to achieve peak performance. For more information, check out the training article on imagery on the Skills Page.

One of the most effective tools to improve your sports performance is goal-setting. But many athletes make the mistake of setting only long-term goals, like winning the regular season or the A10 championship. These goals are great, but they tell you nothing about what you need to be doing right now. You can find a whole training article on effective goal-setting on the Skills page, but here’s a quick way to start: Set a goal for practice every day. Make it challenging, specific and something you can control, like, “Today I will give 100% in doing sprints at the end of practice.” Setting daily practice goals will help you stay focused on what you need to do right now to reach those long-term goals. 

Even professional athletes report that it’s difficult to focus on their sport when they’re having personal problems. The next time you have a lot on your mind when you have to compete, try this simply yet effecting technique called “Parking Your Thoughts.” Make a list of your problems, put the list in a sealed envelope, and put the envelope in your gym bag or locker. If you get distracted, remind yourself that you’ll open the envelope and deal with the problems after the game. You can find more information on the Mental Wellness page of this website.

Fall sports are here! When I think about these sports, I think about intensity. Cross country, field hockey, soccer, and volleyball require a lot of intensity, but surprisingly, there is such a thing as being too intense.  Everyone has their optimal level of intensity for their sport. If it’s too low, you’ll be flat; if it’s too high, you’ll be anxious.  To find your optimal level of intensity, recall one of your best performances and remember how intense, energized, nervous, or relaxed you felt. You can also monitor your intensity level before each game this season to find the intensity level you need to compete at your peak. You can get more information on intensity regulation here.

  Got An Injury? We Have A Program For That!

posted June 5, 2017 by Dana R Blackmer

There are two kinds of athletes: Those that are injured, and those that will be. If you're like most injured athletes, you’ll want to get back in the game as fast as you can. You probably know that medical advances have reduced the time injured athletes are sidelined, but you may not know that using mental skills can also help you manage your pain, optimize your healing, and get back to your sport with more confidence and less fear of re-injury. 

Athletes who learn certain mental skills along with their physical rehabilitation recover faster than those who don’t. And research has proved this! Even better, these mental skills – such as relaxation training, imagery, and thought control strategies – are safe, effective, and easy to learn. 

VCU’s Mental Skills Injury Recovery program is comprehensive, evidence-based, and specifically designed to help you get back in the game quickly, safely, and confidently. It includes over two hours of audio training, structured practice exercises, and one-on-one consultations to provide you with an individually-tailored mental skills program to help you: 

·         Control your pain

·         Optimize your healing and

·         Return to your sport with confidence 

Learning these mental skills is easy, quick, and convenient. Because you’ll download the audio training part of this program, you can learn the critical mental skills whenever you want, wherever you want. And studies have shown that practicing these mental skills for only several minutes a day can help you experience less pain, use less medication, have greater flexibility, regain strength more quickly, and return to your sport more quickly, more confidently, and with less fear of re-injury. You can check out samples of the audios on the "Injury Recovery" page of this website. 

Contact VCU’s sport psychologist Dr. Dana Blackmer at 828-8978 or drblackm@vcu.edu to set up an appointment, and start using your brain to heal your body!

  How Mentally Tough Are You? Take The Test And Find Out. 

posted June 1, 2017 by Dana R Blackmer

If you want to ramp up your mental game, you need to know your mental skills strengths and weaknesses. This makes sense, right? If you want to get tougher physically, you need to assess your physical skills: Speed, agility, endurance and strength. In a similar way, if you want to get tougher mentally, you need to assess your mental skills: Things like anxiety management, self-confidence, intensity regulation, concentration, and the ability to stay positive when things go wrong. 

How do you do this? Download the Athlete Inventory of Mental Skills, or AIMS. It’s a 30- item questionnaire that you can complete in about 5 minutes. The AIMS measures the mental skills that athletes need for success in sport. These skills have been identified by athletes and in research studies as being critical to peak sport performance. 

Download a PDF version of the AIMS. Fill it out, save it to your computer, then attach it to an email and send it back to me at drblackm@vcu.edu. I’ll score the questionnaire and send you the results along with a description of how to interpret your scores. I’ll keep all the results confidential; no one’s information will be released to anyone else. 

So, what are you waiting for? Download the AIMS, and take your first step towards a mentally tougher you.

  Finding Your Peak Performance State 

posted May 25, 2017 by Dana R Blackmer

 I bet no sport psych blog post has ever begun this way: 

In the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi there is an inscription. It reads, “Know Thyself.” This saying has been attributed to several different Greek sages, including Socrates, Heraclitus and Pythagoras.  None of these guys were sport psychologists, but they were pretty smart, so they probably would have made pretty good ones.

OK, that was weird. But here’s why I started the post this way: 

Knowing yourself as an athlete means having an awareness of how you respond and what you need in different competitive situations to perform at your best. To “know thyself,” that is, to have self-awareness, is one of the cornerstones on which the foundation of peak sport performance is built. The more you know about your peak performance state, the more you can use mental skills techniques to get closer to it in your competitions. And the closer you get to your peak performance state, the more likely it is that your performance will improve. This is way it’s important for you to follow the advice of the ancient Greeks and “know thyself.” 

If you think about your past practices and competitions, you can probably recall a time when you felt “in the zone” – a time when you felt like you could do nothing wrong, like everything was easy and automatic.  It’s also likely that you can recall a time close to this performance when you felt just the opposite; that is, you felt unmotivated, lethargic, bored, fatigued and like you couldn't do anything right.

Most athletes know what it feels like to be in the zone, but describing the characteristics of this zone is much more difficult. Research done by psychologists Sue Jackson and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (say that three times fast) indicate that many athletes describe a similar subjective state when they have a peak performance. This state, called “flow,” is thought to be the mental state required for peak performance.  While not all athletes experiencing flow have a peak performance, it seems likely that all athletes having a peak performance are in flow.  There are nine characteristics of flow that have been described in this research.

1.     Challenge-Skills Balance – People in flow feel challenged by what they are doing, but believe that they have the skills to succeed. 

2.     Merging of Action and Awareness – People in flow often describe a feeling of being “one” with their actions, a feeling that there is no separation between who they are and what they are doing. 

3.     Clear Goals – There is a well-defined idea of what needs to be done to succeed at the task. 

4.     Unambiguous Feedback – It’s clear how well the task is going and what needs to be done. 

5.     Total Concentration – People in flow report having their focus completely on the task at hand 

6.     Total Control – There is a sense of being able to do anything without consciously trying to control it.

7.     Lack of Self-Consciousness – People in flow report no worries, concerns, fear of failure or self-doubt. 

8.     Time Distortion – This is the feeling that time speeds up or, more often, slows down during the activity. 

9.     The “Autotelic Experience" – This is the feeling that the task is intrinsically motivating, that is, the task feels so enjoyable that performing the task is its own reward. 

Of these nine characteristics, the ones reported by athletes as most important during their peak performances are the merging of action and awareness, total concentration, total control and the autotelic experience. 

The work on flow has attempted to identify the characteristics experienced by all athletes during peak performances; that is, how the zone is the same for everyone. But not all athletes experience flow in exactly the same way.  So when you think of the nine characteristics of flow, think about the ones that you experience most in your peak performances.  This will help you begin to identify what characteristics of flow are most important for you. 

A second line of research has taken an individualized approach to peak performance states; that is, it has looked the how the feelings people have during a peak performance differ from one another. The idea is that everyone has their own peak performance state, but the emotional characteristics of this state differ from one athlete to the next.  The task then becomes how to find out what combination of emotions puts an individual athlete into their unique “Individual Zone of Optimal Functioning” or “IZOF.”  This research, led by psychologist Yuri Hanin and his colleagues, focuses on constructing what’s called an “IZOF Profile,” which is a graph the depicts the unique combination of emotional states an athlete experiences during a peak performance. 

Constructing an IZOF profile as Hanin describes it can provide an athlete with lots of good information, but it’s pretty complicated and time-consuming. But, fear not! I’m going to give you a quick and dirty way to make the process a whole lot simpler, but you will need to do a little homework.

First, think of one of your best performances ever.  Choose a time when you really felt in the zone, like everything came easily, like you could do no wrong. After you have one of your best performances in mind, take about three minutes to imagine the details of this performance as vividly as you can.  To begin the imagery, sit or lie comfortably.  Take a deep, slow breath, hold it for two seconds, then slowly exhale, close your eyes, and relax. Imagine this best performance as vividly as you can. Really focus on all the sights and sounds around you. Try to re-experience what your body felt like as it moved and what your thoughts and feelings were at the time. The more vividly and detailed you can imagine this performance, the better. 

Next, recall one of your worst performances ever.  A performance when it felt like everything was tough, like you just didn’t have it, like you just couldn’t do anything right.  Recalling a bad performance can be more difficult than recalling a good one because we naturally avoid reliving times that were emotionally unpleasant. But imagining both a good and a poor performance will give you a much clearer picture of your peak performance state. Just like you did before, take about three minutes to imagine this performance as vividly as you can. Use all your senses to see the sights, hear the sounds, feel the muscle movements, and experience the thoughts and feelings you had at the time. 

After you’re finished, jot down a few notes about what you imagined to keep the details fresh in your mind. In the next post, I’ll show you how to analyze these performances to determine your peak performance state. In the meantime, if you want more information, read this training article on self-awareness.

  Over-Training And Under-Recovery 

posted May 15, 2017 by Dana R Blackmer

The Sport Performance Coaches and I have been working together to develop a better way to catch the early symptoms of overtraining and under-recovery. Hard training without adequate rest and recovery, both physical and mental, can lead to staleness and burnout. You might see me in the weight room soon to explain the short questionnaire we've developed, but in the meantime, you can track your rest and recovery activities by asking yourself these questions each week (taken from Kellmann, Botterill & Wilson's  "Recovery Cue" questionnaire): 

1) How much effort was required to complete my workouts last week? 

2) How recovered did I feel prior to the workouts last week? 

3) How successful was I at rest and recovery activities last week? 

4) How well did I recover physically last week? 

5) How satisfied and relaxed was I as I fell asleep in the last week? 

6) How much fun did I have last week? 

7) How convinced was I that I could achieve my goals during performance last week? 

Overtraining and under-recovery are hot topics in sport science. You can read more about overtraining, under-recovery, and how to prevent them by clicking here.